Tragically no one has been bit in the arse yet, it could very well that happen that no one will either. Sean Fitzpatrick is, as one of the red tops ran today, 'living it up' in Spain at the moment, another excecutive borrowed 8 million last Spetember using his own shares as security, making the reasonable assumption that the bank would be nationalised making his shares worthless, essenitally handing himself the 8 million.
it sounds more and more like the bankers saw what was coming and went out of their way to secure ways and means to pull a few (million) quid out for themselves as the ship went down
as for the Golden circle, you have to suspect it's has some pretty big names on it, I'd even say that in certain circles of the media names are already out there, this Irish times article gets to the crux of the matter in the last para
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0221/1224241586025.html?via=rel
If the parties are not named by the Government, but come into the public domain through the media, the media would have a very strong public interest defence. This would carry one condition, however – they would need to be very sure the names were correct. A person wrongly named as an investor in these circumstances could have a very strong libel action case indeed.
it's tempting to read between the lines and think that this the times saying "not just yet... but soon... maybe.." RTEs coverage of it has been similarily shadowy... it'll be very, very, very intersting to see who throws the first name out there... though I could be wrong and it all could be confusion generated by the fact that the goverenment itself seems to have no idea wether names should be released or not... two stories released within hours of each other with quotes from high ranking members of the Dáil plainly contradicting themselves... there is clearly chaos reigning here... also you have to love this...
Ms Coughlan insisted that a private Anglo Irish Bank dinner which Brian Cowen attended two weeks before he became Taoiseach was part of his normal day to day work.
Ms Coughlan said: "I think it is inappropriate that aspersions are being cast on the Taoiseach.
"It is a normal day-to-day thing people do (attend dinners) as Taoiseach or Minister for Finance or Cabinet minister."
If they really feel these aspersions are inappropriate they should name the investors or locate the names themselves and if not release at least make some statement that they're happy that it's all legit... if not completely immoral... it might not make anyone any happier, but at least they can make quotes like the above with sounding like they're hiding something and telling us all to piss off and let them do their shady doings
The trick here is to remember that you now own Anglo Irish band, we all do, none of us wanted it, but we own it now and our money (and more of our money then before with the 7% levy and 1% wages levy) is paying for the mistakes, or blatent theivery that has taken place. The level of contempt that is being shown by certain corners of the goverenment, to the public, inspite of this fact is galling and insulting
everyone has to be aware that this isn't going to be an easy few years, and few would say that leting Anglo Irish implode would've been a better idea, but lets start acting like grown ups in a grown up country, with grown up politicans and leave the patronising tone, all the lads looking out for each other scams and cagey pissy responses that charecterised the Haughey/Ahern era behind us, yeah?
there you go now
